Monthly Archives: April 2009

On Good Friday this month a good friend and I photographed the abandoned Solvay Coke & Gas complex in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The 46 acre factory complex closed in 2003 after the EPA took control of clean up and demolition. There were a number of buildings on the property at its peak industrial niveau, but now only four remain intact. The northernmost factory with its dangerous drops, the labratory with its completely flooding basement, an empty rear storage unit, and the main administration offices all contain great photo opportunities. The labratory basement was completely flooded and will soon destabilize. When we visited the administration building basement we could see six inches of standing water and hear flowing water. Unless the water has been turned off I expect that the basement is completely flooded by now. That building will certainly meet a swift demise in the coming years. According to this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article the location is being cleaned up to make way for homes. This development means that this factory will not last. The adventure and decaying toxic beauty made for a great photo set on Flickr.

Caustic

Foto Zeitgeist

This was quite the eBay deal for me. This unused Apple II Workstation Card makes it possible for an Apple IIe with 128 kilobytes of RAM to boot up over an Appleshare network. How much RAM is 128 kilobytes? Well, my current Apple iMac has 2 gigabytes, which by today’s standards is middle of the road in terms of performance. Two gigabytes is equal to 2,097,152 kilobytes. That means my current iMac machine has 8,192 times more RAM than my Apple IIe. Isn’t it amazing what you can do with technology from 1983?

Foto Zeitgeist

Wedl’s hamburger stand has been an instution in Jefferson, WI for over 90 years. A local shared the colorful history of this 10-by-10 foot stand. It has operated under different owners and names, but the signature burger has remained constant. An 80% beef / 20% pork fat mix cooked on the original cast-iron grill topped with fried onions tantalizes the taste buds. The aroma floats down the street and attracts passersby.

Here’s an interesting bit of history about the stand. It was at one point completely demolished by an innattentive driver. The city did not grant permits to rebuild the stand. Locals threw such a fit that the city had to cave in. The stand was then built on the original foundation and includes the original grill.